From Chris Fryer
NASA’s Alan Stern is quite right to complain that “plutoids” sounds far too much like “haemorrhoids” (21 June, p 6). Doubtless he can count on support from other students of the solar system: “asteroids” is, if anything, even worse, so we should all start referring to them as “minor planets”.
Perhaps he can enlist the help of mathematicians, who are needlessly embarrassed by having to say “rhomboids” in public; and indeed palaeoanthropologists, who blush at the mere mention of “hominoids”. I imagine it will be much easier to rename the medical condition. Then Stern can turn his attention to the delicate question of Uranus.
London, UK
